rs of Hollins's as could be found about camp, and an order came
last night for Captain Dodge to report at once at Frederick. He was
better acquainted with Hollins than any one else--among the officers
anyway--and he knew something about his whereabouts the other times he
was missing. This makes the third."

"Three times and out, say I," answers one of the party. "I heard some
talk at division headquarters when I was up there last night: the
general has a letter that Colonel Raymond wrote soon after he was
exchanged, but if it be anything to Hollins's discredit I wonder he did
not write to Putnam. He wouldn't want his successor to be burdened with
a quartermaster whom he knew to be--well--shady, so to speak."

"That's the one thing I never understood about Abbot," says the captain,
sipping the cup of coffee that a negro servant had just brought to him.
"Some more of that, Belshazzar; these gentlemen will join me. How he,
who is so blue-blooded, seems to be on such terms of intimacy with
Hollins is what I mean," he explains. "It was through him that Hollins
was taken into companionship from the very start. He really is
responsible for him. They were class-mates, and no one else knew
anything of him--except vaguely."

"Now there's just where you wrong Abbot, captain," answers Mr.
Hunnewell, very promptly, "and I want to hit that nail on the head right
here. I thought just as you did, for a while; but got an inkling as to
the real state of the case some time ago. It wasn't Abbot who endorsed
him at all, except by silence and sufferance, you may say. Hollins was
at his tent day and night--always following him up and actually forcing
himself upon him; and one night, after Hollins had that first scrape,
and came back under a cloud and went to Abbot first thing to intercede
with the colonel, I happened to overhear a piece of conversation between
them. Abbot was just as cold and distant as man could possibly be. He
told him plainly that he considered his course discreditable to the
whole regiment, and especially annoying to him, because, said Abbot,
'You have virtually made me your sponsor with every man who showed a
disposition to repel you.' Then Hollins made some reply which I did not
fully catch, but Abbot was angry, and anybody could have heard his
answer. He told Hollins that if it had not been for the relationship to
which he alluded he could not have tolerated him at all, but that he
must not draw on it too often. Then